Indigenous Music

I've been writing about Die Fledermaus, which is a work I love, but which I've never heard performed well in the theatre outside Vienna. Why is that? There's certainly an intrinsically Viennese humour about the work, breathing through its text, music and performance. Perhaps Gilbert and Sullivan or Herbert Howells, for example, are the same. Hear that repertoire, Savoy and Collegium Regale, outside Britain, you might get quite a shock.

Do Austrians bring something particularly Mahlerian to Mahler, which other performing traditions just cannot reach? Mahler didn't seem to think so, given his professed enthusiasm for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – whose bumper 'Radio Legacy' boxed set I've been reviewing over the past month. So is there really such a thing as indigenous music?

How limiting it would be if Elgar were just a British concern, Wagner the sole domain of Bayreuth – something the composer and his family at least tried to achieve with Parsifal – or Tchaikovsky, heaven forfend, only performed in non-gay-propaganda Russia. Why, then, has the musical wit of Johann Strauss II failed to translate to date? For a work – and a repertoire for that matter – that is so cherished in Central Europe, it is bizarrely absent from our stages. And when it is, it is woefully misinterpreted. Yet I hold high hopes for John Wilson's performance of the score with the Philharmonia on 27 April. As he's already proved, Wilson is unbeatable when it comes to getting to the heart of the sound and spirit of a particular repertoire. Fingers crossed.

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